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The study explores the use of professional investor relations (IR) practices in South African (SA) listed companies to understand which theories may be responsible for IR's adoption and growth in South Africa, an emerging economy. Therefore, this study evaluates shareholder value maximisation, stakeholder and legitimization theory and institutional isomorphism theory as possible theories to explain professional IR behaviour in SA listed companies.

The study design is qualitative and exploratory, based on a questionnaire developed and sent to all companies listed on the Johannesburg Securities Exchange (JSE).

The results indicate evidence of isomorphic spread to SA environments from practices observed in the UK and the USA, which we find are mostly performed to promote shareholder interests. The data suggest some evidence that the communication needs of black economic empowerment and environmental, social and governance (ESG) investors are given priority, suggesting the utility of professional IR to obtain legitimisation from society. Contrary to expectation is that social media communication channels are not extensively used.

The descriptive nature of this study may be valuable to IR practitioners to improve SA IR practises, while neglected legitimisation opportunities with regard to the needs of ESG and black economic empowerment shareholders may be fruitfully addressed by practitioners.

This study innovates in its use of legitimisation theory and isomorphism theory to develop the study's expectations. Social problems provide contextual elements unique to SA which provides a good opportunity to test the expectation of legitimisation theory's influence on professional IR practices.

The purpose of this paper is to review the recent literature about institutional repositories (IRs) including the benefits and possible obstacles of setting up an IR. It will also discuss librarians' and authors' participative roles and open access. In conclusion, the paper aims to consider the future of IRs and finally makes recommendations for their successful implementation in academic institutions.

This paper is based on the recently published literature discussing current trends in IRs; although, some historical reference is also necessary to provide background to the open access movement and the early development of IRs. Given that the paper is an account of the history and current status of IRs, a formal documented methodology is not applicable.

The discussion suggests that in spite of all the obstacles to successful implementation, including associated negative perceptions, IRs have been increasingly recognised as a vital tool for scholarly communication and an important source of institutional visibility and a viable source of institutional knowledge management.

This paper is an expression of opinion about current trends and future applications of IRs. It is not based on any formal methodology. This paper will be useful for librarians, academic staff and academic institutions generally, especially in developing countries where IRs are still in a developmental stage. Therefore, some of the general recommendations may not be as relevant for those institutions with well‐established and flourishing IRs.

The paper is aimed at institutions with low‐use repositories. It can be used to persuade management to establish institutional policies and it can also be helpful in clarifying the role of the library. It is also aimed at institutions considering initial development of an IR. The paper outlines the implications for IR practice for different groups, namely authors, librarians and academic administrative staff. It could, therefore, be used to persuade and influence different sets of stakeholders at institutions with under‐populated or embryonic IRs, about the value of open access, the importance of depositing material and the potential functionality afforded by IR packages.

The paper provides a review of the status of IRs and brings together topics previously reported on in isolation.

Financial management, strategic management.

The study can be used by business schools, companies/organizations, individuals, students of business management, in the area of financial and strategic management to study and analyse management strategies by a Government organization that has to balance social objectives and commercial viability.

Indian Railways (IR) is one of the world's largest employers and there was a significant improvement in its financial performance during the period 2004-2008 without any reductions in its workforce. The main reasons for the poor performance of IR prior to this period were attributed to severe competition from other modes of transport, rigid pricing, investment in un-remunerative projects and other such practices. Various recommendations, including restructuring/corporatizing, reorganization, increasing passenger fares, unbundling of non-core activities, downsizing, and outsourcing, had been suggested by various management experts and it was declared that only major reform could rescue IR. However, IR met the challenges and attained unprecedented growth in traffic and earnings through certain strategic decisions. The study analyzes the strategies adopted by IR to improve its poor financial performance.

These include: understanding the challenge of sustaining the current market growth and capturing additional traffic by IR with its peculiar product-mix (transport mix) and limited resources; understanding the main reason for the downtrend of IR finances; acquiring an understanding of the advantage of adopting a volume-focused strategy by IR instead of the existing tariff-focused policy of revenue generation; and understanding the turnaround phase of IR and innovative strategies to get back to the path of growth.

Teaching notes are available; please consult your librarian for access.

This study aims to develop an employee competency model for integrated resorts (IRs) in Macau through insights gleaned from IR professionals and to investigate whether any differences emerge in competency perception between IR professionals and college and high school students.

A mixed-method approach was adopted to answer the research questions. The Delphi approach was used, and four IR experts were invited to refine components of the IR competency for the survey questionnaire. Quantitative data were collected from 596 IR professionals and college/high school students. Fisher’s least significant difference test was used to test the competency gaps between groups. Qualitative interviews were conducted with 12 respondents to gather their comments on the survey results.

The IR competency model consists of 15 critical competencies. A strong work ethic and customer service orientation were ranked as important attributes of employee competency among the four target groups. A mismatch in IR competency perceptions emerged among IR managers, employees and students.

The IR competencies can serve as a pragmatic reference for IRs in terms of employee recruitment and training. This model can also serve as a guideline to ensure the alignment between IR industry needs and the course offerings in higher education institutions in Macau.

The IR competencies contribute to resolving human capital issue challenging Macau’s IRs and provide insights for Macau’s IR stakeholders to improve the IR workforce development.

This paper aims to identify key sectors in carbon footprint responsibility, an introduced concept depicting CO₂ responsibilities allocated through the supply chain containing sectoral activities and interactions. In detail, various key sectors could be identified according to comparative advantages in trade, sectoral linkage and sectoral synergy within the supply chain.

A semi-closed input–output model is used to make the household income–expenditure relationship endogenous through the supply chain where sectoral CO₂ emissions are calculated, and the production-based responsibility (PR) principle is evaluated. Thus, according to “carbon footprint responsibility”, modified hypothetical extraction method is applied to decompose sectoral CO₂ in terms of comparative advantages in trade, sectoral linkage and synergy. Finally, key sectors are identified via sectoral shares and associated decompositions in carbon footprint responsibility.

Compared to 2005, in 2012, the PR principle failed to track sectoral CO₂ flow, and embodied CO₂ in import and interprovincial export increased, with manufacturing contributing the most; manufacturing should take more carbon responsibilities in the internal linkage, and tertiary sectors in the net forward and backward linkage, with sectors enjoying low carbonization in the mixed linkage; inward net CO₂ flows of manufacturing and service sectors were more complicated than their outward ones in terms of involved sectors and economic drivers; and residential effects on CO₂ emissions of traditional sectors increased, urban effects remained larger than rural ones and manufacturing and tertiary sectors received the largest residential effects.

The value of this paper is as follows: the household income–expenditure relationship got endogenous in intermediate supply and demand, corresponding to the rapid urbanization in megacities; key sectors were observed to change flexibly according to real sectoral activities and interaction; and the evaluation of the PR principle was completed ahead of using a certain CO₂ accounting principle at the city level.

Management: human resources management.

Undergraduate and postgraduate.

This case gives critical insights in the complex issues surrounding the management of employment relationship in Africa, specifically focusing on Botswana. It is set in the context of explosive industrial relations involving Debswana Diamond Mining Company and the Botswana Mine Workers Union over the contentious issues of pay bonus and collective bargaining. Failure to reach an amicable compromise by both parties' results in a debilitating strike which costs the company millions of funds and affected it's the corporate image contrary to its well crafted social responsibility. More painfully, the end game is a loss of employment and dreams shattered for 461 dismissed workers who depended solely on this work as their only source of income.

At the end of reading the case students are expected to: understand the limits of managerial prerogative and the right to manage; appreciate the inherent conflict of interests between labour and capital; consider more equitable compensation schemes in dealing with collective bargaining; and discuss the concept of social responsibility in the context internal customers-employees.

Teaching note.

Purpose: The purpose of this chapter is to establish the sustainability reporting practices of FTSE 100 companies using integrated reporting (IR), corporate social responsibility (CSR) and corporate governance (CG) as proxies. Our study has adopted a holistic approach by combining dimensions of each factor in one variable.

Design/Methodological Approach: The study data cover all FTSE 100 companies over five years, thereby generating 505 company-year observations for each variable of the study. Authors have collected the data from Environmental, Social and Governance (ESG) reports filed with Thomson Reuters and International Integrated Reporting Council (IIRC).

Findings: Results indicate the practice of sustainability reporting in FTSE 100 companies both per variables and dimensions levels. It shows, for example, 89% of the companies reported on their charitable donations. The study also found that 79% of the FTSE 100 companies reported on their sustainability committees whilst 86% and 85% reported on their emission reduction and waste reduction policies, respectively. Results show that the CSR impact is higher than CG regarding IR adoption. The Logistic Model manages to explain a high percentage of IR adoption while controlling for other misspecification issues such as multicollinearity.

Practical Implication: The study highlights practice of substantiality reporting for public shareholding companies listed on FTSE 100 Index along with interaction among proxies. These will be of interest to companies not only in the FTSE 100 Index but also those outside. Companies can rely on these factors to strengthen their governance, social responsibility and reporting policies in consideration of all stakeholders and not just a few. We believe that we shed a quantitative explanation on IR adoption by CSR and CG factors, and we expect an impact on practices following results of our study.

Social Implication: Results have indicated that at least 60% of companies in the FTSE 100 Index have imbedded social responsibility activities, such as charitable giving, waste reduction initiatives, emissions reduction policy and sustainability committees.

This chapter investigates how integrated reporting (IR) can contribute to a better corporate social responsibility (CSR) implementation through diffusion and adoption of CSR practices and actually applying the CSR discourse. Based on innovation diffusion theory, we intend to analyse the diffusion and adoption of CSR on the grounds of IR. The purpose of this study is to demonstrate that IR does indeed represent a mean of reducing the gaps between CSR discourse and its implementation. In order to select the most relevant papers in the area of CSR and IR, we applied the method of positive research. Therefore, the review of literature was made by analysing various theoretical and empirical studies. Setting the main coordinates for CSR and IR through theoretical background, we continue with an empirical analysis on 23 companies that voluntarily publish integrated reports. We intend to demonstrate that IR encourages a diffusion of CSR practices, as companies become more interested in their CSR behaviour.

The purpose of this paper is to explore how the managers of early adopting Australian firms contribute to the institutionalisation of integrated reporting (IR).

This study is situated within institutional theory. The authors undertook semi-structured interviews with 23 Australian managers. The authors drew on Gabriel's (2000) poetic analytics to show how the sensemaking activities of the early adopters contribute to the institutionalisation process.

Two main narratives dominate our managers’ experience: IR as story-telling and IR as meeting expectations. These two narratives are constructed simultaneously and theyset up contrasting plots regarding salient events, responsibilities and characters that are resolved through one or more of three “inter-narratives” that background these tensions. The inter-narratives suggest time, the company's strategy, and talking and engagement can solve problems.

The authors argue that the managers of early adopting firms are important in the institutionalisation process. Even though they may not necessarily be institutional entrepreneurs they do engage in important “institutional work”. The study is limited by its predominant focus on only one participant to the institutionalisation process, and it is may be the case that the institutionalisation of IR is not ultimately successful.

Provides in-depth insights into an under-researched participant in an institutional field contributes to institutionalisation. Additionally, it sheds light on the conditions under which firms will engage with IR.

The purpose of this case study is to illustrate how a university library collaborated with a specific college to preserve scholarship with a sustainable approach. The practical process described is recommended for increasing content submissions in a newly established institutional repository. Of the eight colleges at Middle Tennessee State University (MTSU), the Honors College was selected as a case study for a library–college collaboration on content curation for the institutional repository that is maintained by MTSU’s Walker Library.

Concept of shared and divided responsibilities for the upload, maintenance and sustainability of institutional repository submissions based on a particular case study and aided with literature on data management, digital publishing, library publishing and preservation research.

The partner approach, the sharing and division of responsibilities, is instrumental to the growth and sustainability of a library publishing program and for the preservation of university scholarship.

The (college) partner approach not only educates campus units about a new resource (e.g. institutional repository), but also encourages campus units to rethink other current and outdated practices that need to adapt to technological changes that support the unit and its students. This approach will help the library with campus outreach after an institutional repository is implemented and offers guidance on a collaborative approach to repository submission growth.

This paper suggests a (college) partner approach that mutually benefits the College and its students, departments and the library that maintains the institutional repository on behalf of the university. During the implementation process of this case study, an Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA)/accessibility compliance issue of repository items surfaced and allowed for a new course of action to be taken campus wide which adds to the originality of this case study.